Keeping OS/2 up-to-date

An editorial view from Christian Hennecke, Editor-in-Chief of the VOICE Newsletter.

Time moves on, and so does the world of computing. Lately, however, it has become more and more apparent that
OS/2
has stayed behind. New and updated standards like ACPI
and SMB cause problems with hardware support and
LAN access.
Ongoing development makes tools and available information outdated or obsolete.

While the first kind of problem is mainly tackled by developers, the second also requires
contributions by end-users. Developers need users for testing their applications and providing information. We cannot
expect freeware and shareware developers to buy loads of hardware to test their new drivers, for
instance. Neither should they spend countless days locating small bits of information that others have ready at their
hands. The same applies to maintainers of project documentation or informational web sites. This is where end-users
can, and should or even have to, help and relieve developers and maintainers so they can focus on their area of
expertise.

You can contribute to many projects. The lists of OS/2 compatible hardware need constant updating, for
instance. If you buy any new hardware that works with OS/2, see if it is already listed and provide the list
maintainers with information if it is not. Have a look at the documentation of the freeware and shareware you use. If
you find anything missing or unclear, tell the developers or project maintainers about it. Or even better, fill in
the gaps of freeware documentation yourself.

Two projects that are especially effected by ongoing development are XWorkplace and ConfigTool. Both
rely on lists of drivers and programs to provide help to end-users about the content of CONFIG.SYS. XWorkplace also
provides information about WPS classes. Both need to be updated with each new driver, program, or class, and when
parameters have changed. Especially XWorkplace suffers from lack of updates in that area which makes it less useful
for end-users.

In most cases, it does not take much to help. Information about drivers that you have installed is easy for you to
get and contribute, for instance, but to find it can be hard for others who don't have the hardware. Please
consider donating a little of your spare-time.

We are always interested in your thoughts and views on subjects related to OS/2 and would like to see
opinion/editorial pieces, as well as hardware/software reviews and HowTo articles. If you have an idea for an
article, why not write one. It's one of the best ways, short of programming native OS/2 applications, that you
can help the OS/2 Community. And anyone can do it. Few of our writers are professionals. They are just OS/2 users
trying to help other OS/2 users. Please send me your ideas or, better yet, a draft of an article to editor@os2voice.org. Please note our guidelines for
submissions to the VOICE Newsletter. There you find suggestions for topics, hints on content, structure and
formatting, as well as the legalese.

VOICE Online Update: This month the general member meetings are scheduled on April 2 and
16 at 3PMEDT (20:00 GMT). Everyone interested in OS/2 or eComStation is invited to attend either or both of
these sessions in #
VOICE on the Webbnet IRC network. For more information on attending online
VOICE IRC meetings please see the VOICE Meeting Information page - http://www.os2voice.org/meetinginfo.html.

This month, Peter Brown takes a look at the Canon PIXMA iP4000 printer. Printer
manufacturers stopped writing OS/2 drivers long ago and it has become increasingly difficult to find ink jet printers
which deliver decent results with the drivers provided by IBM. Read about Peters findings in Current printers? One that works, the Canon PIXMA iP4000.

OS/2's built-in clipboard has rather limited functionality but there are tools to extend it. Keith Merrington
reviews ClipView 2.9 by David Saville.

Over the years, using the LAN Requester and Peer components in heterogenous networks has become increasingly
difficult due to ongoing development, Microsoft breaking standards, and Unix solutions adapting the broken ones. A
while ago, Netlabs decided to take the challange. Paul Smedley gives the new Samba server for
OS/2 a first look.